Carroll Poke Runyon is a former Green Beret officer and a writer of adventure stories (Argosy Magazine) and novels (Night Jump - Cuba and Commando X, From the Tower of Darkness, and Drell Master). He holds a master's degree in cultural anthropology from California State University at Northridge, He is a KCCH in the Masonic Scottish Rite.

He is an initiate of the Sakya Order of Tibetan tantric Buddhism, and has served as an officer in three active Golden Dawn temples. Runyon knew Israel Regardie and used Regardie's copy, along with others, in deciphering The Golden Dawn Cypher Manuscript.
Carroll Poke Runyon is the founding president of The Church of the Hermetic Sciences, and magister of The Order of the Temple of Astarte. He is the writer-producer of a series of occult documentaries on DVD (The Magick of Solomon, Dark Mirror of Magick, and The Rites of Magick). Most recently he wrote and produced an occult science fiction drama Beyond Lemuria, dealing with the mystic legends of California's Mt. Shasta.